Typically, footwear having an upper and an outsole in combination providing a toe cap having a structure which receives the five toes of the foot as a group. However, footwear having a toe cap has the disadvantage of requiring all five toes of the foot to move as a group within the footwear even though the big toe is anatomically structured to move independent of the four other toes. This disadvantage has been addressed by a variety of different forms of footwear.
As a first illustrative example, footwear having five toe pockets each having a configuration to correspondingly receive one each of five toes allows independent articulation of each toe within a corresponding toe pocket as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,805,860. However, footwear having five toe pockets may have the disadvantage of forcing the toes to move independently of each other, even though the four most lateral toes of the human foot share common musculature and tendons and generally move together as one group.
As a second illustrative example, footwear having four toe pockets with the most medial three toe pockets correspondingly structured to receive one each of the big toe and the adjacent two toes and the most lateral of the four toe pockets structured to receive the most lateral two toes of the human as one group is shown in U.S. Design Pat. No. D639,535; however, this structure may not advantage movement of the three most lateral toes of the human foot as one group consistent with the shared musculature and tendons.
As a third illustrative example, footwear having two toe pockets with the most medial first toe pocket correspondingly structured to be received the big toe and the second toe pocket correspondingly structured to receive the remaining four toes of the human foot as group is shown by U.S. Pat. No. 7,971,374. However, the four toes of the human foot located within one toe pocket may be disadvantaged by a loss of prehensility, or loss of grasp between the big toe and the second toe.
Accordingly, there would be an advantage in footwear structured to allow independent articulation of the big toe and the adjacent second toe while maintaining common movement among the remaining three toes.